I understood this dream as well. And interrupted it. I raised my head. I was sitting on the Ice in that very same hollow melted by my body the night when my heart first spoke. There were only stars around me. There was no Earth: the mound of Ice floated in black space. This was no longer a dream, but something absolutely necessary for me. I placed my hands upon the Ice. And immediately touched its heart. The Ice answered me instantly. Forcefully and abruptly. It shuddered. And I took this unexpected blow with my heart. My heart trembled in response and discovered something new. I could see with my heart. The Earth appeared all around. I saw our entire planet with my heart. All of it, from the stones, to the water and plants, to the animals and people on it, consisted of atoms — our building material, engendered by the Light. All of it was the same — there wasn’t any difference between a stone and a man, a tree and a bird. And amid this uniform mass of erroneous, blundering combinations of atoms, there shone twenty points of Light. They shone in the hearts of my brothers and sisters. I saw each of them. They were complete, perfect amid this gloomy world.
I woke up and opened my eyes. Once again I raised my head. I was sitting in the reading room at a table. People were sitting all around me. Four portraits hung on the wall. But instead of the writers’ faces, something congealed and trembled. That happens sometimes when you look at an object through eyes that have been crying. But there weren’t any tears in my eyes. I rubbed them. No pictures appeared. I began to look at the portraits intensely: instead of faces, pinkish-brown flashes swirled. I turned my eyes to the people sitting around me. Something had changed in their outward appearance. I had stopped seeing them only with my eyes. A new vision was revealed to me. I saw humans with my heart. In their entirety.
I stood up cautiously and approached the window. Beyond was a city of people.
And time stopped.
With my heart I saw the history of humankind. A many-million swarm of voices surrounded me: millions of beds squeaked, sweet moans sounded, sperm flooded into millions of vaginas, eggs were fertilized, wombs swelled, fetuses pushed and kicked, cries of birth-giving could be heard, millions of bloody newborns were squeezed into the world and cried out weakly; they were washed, their umbilical cords cut, they were swaddled, placed at breasts, they greedily sucked their mothers’ milk, began to grow, crawl, sit up, stand, began to walk, reach for toys, speak, and run; they went to the first day of school with book bags and flowers, began to write letters on paper, read books, learn the rules of life, love and hate, play and sing, wonder and deride, torture and idolize, hope and despair, embrace tenderly and beat viciously until blood flowed, betray and sacrifice. They finished school, became adults, went to work, began to earn money, fell in love, embraced, flung themselves on beds, carried out millions of sexual acts, conceived, gave birth to infants, grew old, died.
And I saw: armies many thousands strong attacking one another to the beat of a drum, holding in their hands well-made weapons of murder; I saw volleys of guns and cannons, smashed skulls, eyes poked out, battles; I heard the whistle of hot lead, the moans of the wounded, the joyous roar of the victors — those who were able to kill better; I saw the power of one group of people over others, monstrous humiliations, cringing toadyism, the ruthless suppression of other people’s will, overfilled prisons, barbaric torture, skin flayed from the living, people burned alive on a slow fire; mass demonstrations, show trials and executions carried out to the crowd’s approving roar, workers manufacturing the perfect weapons for the destruction of people; I saw the sale of slaves and women; the poor, people dying on the street, children swollen with hunger.
And I saw: helpless old men dying in their beds, young people drowning in rivers, people being burned by flames, people writhing from terrible diseases, going mad, women taking their own lives from unhappy love, dying while giving birth, infants born dead.
And I saw: thieves killing for money, rapists forcing women at knifepoint to spread their legs, con artists deftly bankrupting others, liars of genius who turned deceit into a great art, calculating poisoners, executioners calmly taking a meal after their work, inquisitioners sending people to the flames in the name of good, mass murder carried out against those belonging to another nation.
And I saw: people locking their houses with complicated locks so that other people could not enter.
And I saw: hunters murdering animals for pleasure, exquisite meals prepared from the corpses of beasts, fish, and birds, human mouths devouring meat juicy with blood, animal farms breeding animals in order to skin them and make beautiful clothes from their pelts, women flaunting these clothes and flattering men.
And I saw: maggots devouring carrion, a beetle eating the maggot, a bird pecking at the beetle, a ferret chewing the bird’s head off, an eagle tearing the ferret apart with its talons, a lynx pouncing on the eagle, wolves gnawing at the lynx, a bear breaking the wolf’s spine, a falling tree killing the bear, flies laying eggs in the rotting bear carcass, maggots breaking out of their eggs and devouring the carrion.
And I understood the very essence of human beings.
Man was a MEAT MACHINE.
I returned my gaze to the portraits: paint swirled, trembled, blended. There were no faces. I looked about the room. An old man sat behind the nearest table with some magazines. I walked over to him and stared at the open magazine. Instead of images, I saw the same swirling colored and gray dots. I took my identification card out of my pocket and looked at it. In the place of the photograph a gray blot swirled. As soon as I had discovered the essence of man, I stopped being able to see images of people. I walked through the hall cautiously, as though afraid to spill what I had discovered. People sat still, concentrating. They were meat machines. And each of them existed by himself. They sat there, immersing themselves in paper. Each was interested only in this paper and completely uninterested in his neighbor. Between them there was and could be no fellowship. They were our mistake. We created them billions of years ago, when we were Light-bearing rays. Meat machines consisted of the same atoms as other worlds we had created. But the combination of these atoms was ERRONEOUS. For this reason the meat machines were mortal. They could not be in harmony, either with the surrounding world or with themselves. They were born in suffering, and in suffering they left this life. Their entire life boiled down to the struggle for comfort, the continuation of the existence of bodies that needed food and clothing. But their bodies, appearing on Earth suddenly, like an explosion, disappeared just as rapidly. They aged quickly, got sick, writhed, became motionless, rotted, and dissolved into atoms. That was the path of the meat machines.
And I saw the Earth. It floated and spun in the Cosmos, between the worlds of Peace and Harmony, which we had created. And only the Earth was restless and disharmonic. And we alone were to blame for this.
And we alone could correct the mistake.
“Everything’s ready, you can take it,” said a voice.
I looked around.
Behind me stood a meat machine in a gray Russian peasant shirt with blue oversleeves and small round glasses on an unremarkable mustachioed face. He was waiting for an answer. I tried to remember, preparing an answer in his language. And suddenly I saw his life: a fairly difficult birth, a painful childhood, a miserly, rough father, a quiet, submissive mother, fear of heights, love of dogs, a broken finger, the lycée, the death of his sister, the fear of catching diphtheria, successful studies, an unsuccessful sexual act with a prostitute, fear of women, the university, a sex act with an upperclassman, the Revolution, the death of his father, life in a commune, the death of his lover, war, concussion, an unsuccessful marriage, an unsuccessful suicide attempt, the library. He loved: cheese, pocket watches, the Bolshevik Party, the orders of silent, strong men, the fantastical novels of Wells, Trotsky’s slogan about the liquidation of the family, bicycles, chess, cinematography, his work, clear dishes, the smell of sperm, long conversations. He didn’t like: heights, swamps, spiders, flour gruel, dreams about a slow fat man, loud women,
children, hangnails, priests, squeaky boots; more than anything on earth he feared torture by fire.
“Are you ill?” he asked.
“I am quite healthy,” I answered, and, slowing down, asked him, “Where does your slow fat man live?”
He froze. I couldn’t distinguish the expression on his face, but I saw how taken aback he was.
“I...I don’t know,” he answered.
“But I do. In your late sister’s room, near the cabinet with the crack. In a wet corner.”
He stood stock-still. I took the package from him, returned to my table, placed the packet in a case, and left the room. Putting on my coat, I left the library and went out into a city of meat machines. They walked along the street, rode on sleighs and in automobiles, jumped onto the trams, crowded the stores. Some of them were rushing to work, others — home. Waiting for the meat machines at work were only machines or paper covered with letters; at home — other meat machines and food prepared for them. The entire city consisted of tiny stone caves. In each cave lived a family of meat machines. The caves were firmly locked against other meat machines, although none of them differed structurally from one another. But the meat machines were afraid of one another because some of them had big caves and others had small ones. At work the meat machines earned money in order to buy food and clothes. They ate in the caves, slept there, and produced new meat machines. This happened at night: the meat machines lay on each other and moved. Then in one of them a tiny meat machine began to grow. Nine months later it was born and began its life in the cave. It grew and gradually became a normal meat machine. That was how the meat machines lived in their city.
It was possible to ride the tram to Lubyanka, but I walked. The passersby floated past me. And I could find out everything about each of them. My heart saw them. The faces of the passersby merged into one indistinguishable face. The face of a meat machine. At the corner of Tverskaya and Mokhovaya streets someone grabbed me by the sleeve. I stopped.
“Hey, Komsomol buddy, where’s Glavpromsbyt around here?”
A stocky, warmly dressed meat machine stood in front of me. He had come to Moscow from Podolsk. He was born in a train, grew up in a bourgeois family with a father who drank and a mother who worked; he always worked, first as a hauler on the river, then as a porter in town; he served in the cavalry, ended up in the war, cracked three peoples’ heads open, shot one in battle, executed sixteen prisoners, served in the Cheka, was fired for rape, got married, worked at a factory, at the ports, on the railroad, speculated on different things, forged documents, went into business, became a procurer, traded in sugar, buckwheat, and morphine. He loved: meatballs in tomato sauce, airplanes, bosses, the revolver under his pillow, forcing his wife to resist him before the sex act, the smell of pharmacies, monetary deception, thinking about the bright future as he fell asleep, velvety black lamb’s wool, women’s gloves, horse parades. He feared: bosses, snakes, dying in his sleep, thoughts about the endlessness of the universe, sudden artillery bombardment, syphilis, and arrest.
“Don’t hide morphine. You’d do better to hide sugar,” I said. Leaving him to stand there in bewildered shock, I walked on.
Meat machines kept on walking past me. Each carried the swarm of personal history. Each buzzed and whirled. I moved among these swirling zones. They were energetic holes. Their energy was inimical to the energy of the Light in my heart. I felt that each penetration into someone else’s life drained energy from my heart. I tired very quickly. I walked on, trying to touch the meat machines only very lightly with my heart.
Not far from the OGPU building a beggar crawled along the sidewalk. I walked up to her. I couldn’t restrain myself — I entered her swarm: a successful birth in a white-and-blue bedroom, a father strewing the mother and newly born daughter with rose petals from a golden dish, a wealthy family, a happy childhood, singing with piano accompaniment, hide-and-seek, horses, jam, croquet, a poodle named Arto, love of her father’s strong hands, a doll named Brunhilde, fear of her strict mother, the death of a brother, a pillow with “a secret,” a herbarium, a parrot who could say the word “locomotive,” a formal ball, a boy who kissed her on the cheek, love for this boy, tears, fever, the desire to always be with this boy, with this boy named Sasha, with this golden-haired boy with blue eyes, a dream about the boy removing her Baba Yaga mask, which refused to come off, anyway, anyhow. The mask of Baba Yaga, Baba Yaga with a very long nose.
The beggar woman stopped crawling.
She raised her face. It was dark with years of dirt. Instead of a left eye there was a dark yawning depression. The eyebrow above it was split by a deep scar from the blow of a saber: heat, dust, a long trip on a cart, straw, watermelons, diamonds in a left boot, night, a campfire, people, people coming out of the forest, a murdered horse, swarthy people, swift people, stinking people tearing dresses, quick people lying down on her one after the other and then again lying down on her, and again lying down on her, the coming of the dawn, saber blows.
I recognized Nika Riabova. And I, too, stopped.
She looked at me with a cloudy, teary eye. Her lips separated, revealing yellowed teeth.
“Immer mimmer Jean Valjean...” she muttered. Then she passed gas, laughed, and crawled farther down the sidewalk.
I watched her go. Nika crawled away. With her, everything human crawled away from me. And I DIDN’T WANT to stop her.
She crawled like a machine. She too was a meat machine. One of hundreds of millions.
I turned around. And went on my way.
I walked to Lubyanka. Passing through the entrance I climbed to the second floor and handed the parcel to the boss. He was displeased by the delay. His mouth pulsed gloomily. I had to explain something to this meat machine. I recalled the words of meat machines.
“Comrade director, it was the library’s fault. They were still working on fresh material.”
“All right, Deribas, go and eat,” he answered. “Twenty minutes. And then back to it.”
The director loved: being a director, fried chicken, carving wooden picture frames, duck hunting, thin, hysterical women, the smell of gasoline, and military parades.
I went to the cafeteria to take a couple of apples to eat. The place smelled of food for meat machines. The large cafeteria was full of meat machines. They energetically ate borscht, barley porridge, and drank tea with sugar. I looked at them. Their faces swirled. They sweated. They felt fine. They reminded me of the guild at the machine factory. The meat machines sat and swallowed food. Spoons clinked, teeth chewed. This was a guild for the processing of food. Suddenly I noticed sister Fer. She entered the cafeteria. And the gloomy world of the meat machines parted. Fer was DIFFERENT! I went to her. My heart spoke with her. And I saw all of her. Her entire life. Fer understood what I saw. She picked an apple up off the tray and put it in my hand. Our fingers squeezed the apple. It split.
We left the cafeteria.
The Circus
The brotherly Circle of Light helped me to understand what was new in me. At night I held the Ice hammer in my hands and pressed it to my breast. My heart calmed itself. It healed with every new blow of the Light. Now it saw the world of the Earth.
The next day off, Fer, Rubu, Ep, and I set out to search. Our magnet illuminated the Moscow crowd. We took the tram down to the National Hotel and walked up Tverskaya Street. Our hearts exerted themselves. We went into stores, looked at the lines of people, glanced into the entrances of buildings. Meat machines moved all around us. They were busy with their affairs. Their faces whirled with worry. Their hearts pumped blood. Their muscles moved their bones. And around every meat machine was a swarm. I walked through dozens of these swarms, protecting my heart from them. It was searching. Fer was close by. She moaned from the tension. We were trying.
Having walked all the way up Tverskaya to Lesnaya Street, we stopped. Our hearts grew heavy. They beat hard, pulsing with the Light. The Moscow crowd was heavy. It hung in a dense din, which had to be moved aside. We crumpled in
this din. Our faces covered with sweat. Our legs swayed beneath us. Rubu and Ep held our backs up. They pushed against us from behind. We threw our heads back and leaned against our brothers. We looked at the sky. We breathed heavily. We remembered the Ice. And lay down on it. And gathered new strength. The huge mass lying in Siberia answered us.
Resting a bit, we crossed to the other side of Tverskaya. And moved down underground. The din of the meat machines seized us. We illuminated and parted it. Ep and Rubu held us up by our backs. They helped us with their hearts. Our legs moved with difficulty. We arrived at Strastnoi Boulevard. We stopped and rested. We turned around and our hearts flared: one of ours! A tall, skinny man in an expensive coat was getting into an automobile. There were two others with him. While he slowly settled himself on the seat, I saw him: a foreigner, from a good family, an old father, eighteen columns of a university courtyard, a rapier, two scars, a new home, war, shrapnel, seven shards, the small breasts of his wife, coffee rings on a blueprint, two daughters, fear of blood disease, fear of safety pins, fear of getting lost in the forest, underground work, cement, water and machines, milk chocolate, shaving a woman’s pubis, a great deal of money, hemorrhoids, a labyrinth of trimmed hedges, an orderly desk, his favorite horse Nereid, a lake in the mountains, an airplane, the circus. The circus. The Circus.
The car growled loudly and took off.
“Stop!” Fer screeched, running after the car. Her legs swayed and she fell into Rubu’s arms.
Ice Trilogy Page 21